Every October, the Boardgamecafe.net team takes a 2-week break, hops over to Essen, and immerses ourselves in the world’s largest tabletop boardgaming event! This is now our 13th visits, yet it still feels as exciting as our very first SPIEL back in 2012. That’s the magic of SPIEL – it never gets old!
What is SPIEL Essen?
https://www.spiel-essen.de/en/
As a Presse, we get updates from Merz Verlag the organizer and this year’s records speak for themselves, setting benchmarks across the board.
- Record attendance. SPIEL is no longer just the largest board game fair ever held; it now holds the record of being the highest attendance in history with 230,000 people from all over the world attending the four-day event.
- All eight halls occupied. For the first time, SPIEL occupied all the exhibition halls of Messe Essen – that’s a total of eight halls and 81,200 square meters.
- Sold out for all four days. For the first time, the fair is sold out on all four days – even with an expanded ticket capacity (made possible by expanding into Hall 8).
- More exhibitors. Total number of exhibitors also rose to 997 exhibitors from 53 countries – that’s an increase of 4.8%.
- More new games. A record 2,012 new releases were brought into SPIEL, seeing an increase of more than 10% from last year!
And for those wondering – with SPIEL seemingly outgrowing the Messe Halls, are they planning to relocate the fair? Merz Verlag is very clear on this – there is no plan to relocate from Essen. Their focus will continue to be refining and developing SPIEL at Essen.
For those wondering who the person gracing the SPIEL 2026 banner is, here’s the deets!
The official ambassador for SPIEL 2026 was American artist and illustrator Peter Mohrbacher. Best known for Angelarium, his self-created fantasy world, Mohrbacher’s creative work continues to captivate audiences. He is the third ambassador in SPIEL’s initiative connecting figures from adjacent cultural sectors with the trade fair. Mohrbacher represents the world of visual art and illustration—an element essential to board game design.
Our journey into Essen
We travelled into Essen from Salzburg on the 21 October. This time however we are not staying at any of our usual bases i.e. Holiday Inn or Premier Inn. Instead we have a new base camp in NH Essen. Read more about our travel day in my next post!
#13yearsofSpiel
#LetTheGamesBegin
For more SPIEL Essen reports:
https://boardgamecafe.net/category/spiel-essen/
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